Scunthorpe problem

The Scunthorpe problem is the blocking of e-mails, forum posts or search results by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked.

The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL's profanity filter prevented residents of the town of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, from creating accounts with AOL, because the town's name contains the substringcunt.[1] Years later, Google's filters apparently made the same mistake, preventing residents from searching for local businesses that included Scunthorpe in their names.[2]

In 2000, a Canadian television news story on web filtering software found that the website for the Montreal Urban Community (Communauté urbaine de Montréal, in French) was entirely blocked because its domain name was its French acronym CUM (www.cum.qc.ca);[4] "cum" (among other meanings) is English-language slang for semen.

In February 2004, in Scotland, Craig Cockburn reported that he was unable to use his surname (pronounced "Coburn") with Hotmail. Separately he had problems with his workplace email because of the name of the pharmaceutical Cialis, which was often the subject line used on spam or scam emails, occurring within his job title of software specialist. He was told by Hotmail to spell his name C0ckburn (with a zero instead of the letter "o"); Hotmail later reversed the ban.[5] In 2010 he had a similar problem registering on the BBC site where again the first four characters of his surname caused a problem for the content filter.[6]

In February 2006, Linda Callahan, a resident of Ashfield, Massachusetts, was initially prevented from registering her name with Yahoo! as an e-mail address as it contained the substring Allah. Yahoo! later reversed the ban.[7]

In July 2008, Dr. Herman I. Libshitz was initially unable to get the e-mail address he wanted from Verizon because it contained the substring shit. A spokesperson commented: "As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn't allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests. The one from Dr. and Mrs. Libshitz certainly is reasonable and we regret the inconvenience and frustration they've been caused."[8]

The filter of the free wireless service of the town of Whakatane in New Zealand blocked searches involving the town's own name, because the phonetic analysis used by the filter deemed the "whak" to sound like fuck.[10] The town name is Maori, and in the Maori language "wh" is most commonly pronounced as "f".

Gareth Roelofse noted in 2004, "We found many library Net stations, school networks and Internet cafes block sites with the word 'sex' in the domain name. This was a challenge for RomansInSussex.co.uk because its target audience is school children."[2]

In July 2011, web searches in China on the name Jiang were blocked following claims on the Sina Weibo microblogging site that former president Jiang Zemin had died. Since the word "jiang" meaning "river" is written with the same Chinese character, searches related to rivers including the Yangtze (Cháng Jiāng) produced the message "According to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the results of this search cannot be displayed."[11]

In 2001, Yahoo! Mail erroneously changed words, including medireview in place of medieval. That year Yahoo! introduced an email filter which automatically replaced Javascript-related strings with alternate versions, to prevent the possibility of JavaScript viruses in HTML email. The filter would hyphenate the terms "Javascript", "Jscript", "Vbscript" and "Livescript", and replaced "eval", "mocha" and "expression" with the similar but not quite synonymous terms "review", "espresso" and "statement", respectively. Assumptions were involved in the writing of the filters: no attempts were made to limit these string replacements to script sections and attributes, or to respect word boundaries, in case this would leave some loopholes open.[12][13][14]

In October 2004, it was reported that the Horniman Museum in London was failing to receive some of its e-mail because filters mistakenly decided that its name was a version of the words horny man.[15]

Problems can occur with the words socialism, socialist, and specialist because they contain the substring Cialis, the brand name for an erectile dysfunction medication commonly advertised in spam e-mails. Blocking of the word specialist is liable to block emailed résumés and curricula vitae and other material including job descriptions.[16]

In February 2003, members of Parliament at the British House of Commons found that a new spam filter was blocking e-mails to them. It blocked e-mails containing references to the Sexual Offences Bill then under debate, and some messages relating to a Liberal Democrat consultation paper on censorship.[17] It also blocked e-mails sent in Welsh because it did not recognise the language.[18]

In May 2006, Ray Kennedy from Manchester in the UK found that e-mails that he had written to his local council to complain about a planning application had been blocked as they contained the word erection when referring to a structure.[21]

Resumes of magna cum laude graduates have been blocked by spam filters because of inclusion of the word cum, which is Latin for with (in this usage), but is sometimes used as slang for semen in English usage.[23]

Blocked e-mails and web searches relating to The Beaver (based in Winnipeg) caused the publisher to change its name to Canada's History after 89 years of publication.[24] Publisher Deborah Morrison commented: "Back in 1920, The Beaver was a perfectly appropriate name. And while its other meaning is nothing new, its ambiguity began to pose a whole new challenge with the advance of the Internet. The name became an impediment to our growth".[19]

In January 2014, files used in the online game League of Legends were reported as being blocked by some UK ISP filters due to the names 'VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj' and 'XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj' containing the letters used in the word "sex".[30]